I shrugged and rolled my shoulders again—they were stiff and achy from sleeping all night on my couch. Next time, I needed to make sure to hang my legs over the edge and not my poor neck.
“What’s going on, Cage?” Kannon smiled, tightly.
“I need to talk to you about Brooke Fury,” I said, glancing behind me, quickly, to make sure the door was fully closed.
“Dean’s sister?” he asked, shuffling a bunch of papers on his desk.
“Yeah. She’s pretty shaken up,” I said, tapping my fingers on my knees.
“I could imagine. The entire precinct saw her in all her glory yesterday. I heard she’s staying with you?”
“Well, yeah. Captain Anderson made her take leave until the whole thing is sorted out, and my brother’s been staying with me. She was helping me watch him while I’m at work—”
“Cage?” he interrupted.
I tilted my head, “Yeah?”
“You’re making this personal, aren’t you?”
“I’m not going to lie. I like her. But it’s been strictly platonic. But Sarge I’m here because the guy in the photos with her? It’s someone here, and he’s been harassing her—”
“Cage. If PO Fury feels harassed by a fellow officer, she needs to speak to someone from the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity.”
“What she needs is our help, sir.”
He sighed deeply, “I take it she was sleeping with the guy?”
“Yeah,” I said, a little embarrassed for telling her story.
“You know as well as I do Cage; it’s not going to look good for her. If she files a complaint, she’ll look like a whiny, brokenhearted girl, who wants to get back at him. Nobody will want to work with her, and it’ll most likely get her transferred to a shittier place than this.You knowhow this job works.”
“It’s more than that, Max.” I stood up and paced in front of his desk.
“Then, let her make the accusation, let her file a complaint. But, my advice to you is to steer clear of it, because when it comes down, this place will be crawling with people. Everyone will be pointing fingers at you along with her.”
“He physically assaulted her, about a month ago,” I seethed.
“And she said nothing then? So she’s a cop whoalloweda domestic incident to happen? How’s that going to look?” He leaned his hands down on his desk, giving me a serious expression.
I stared at him blankly, anger boiling in my chest. I knew how it would look.
“Like it reallydidn’tfucking happen.” He leaned forward, folding his hands together. “If I were you, I’d just watch her back. Something is going on here, and I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s big. Keep her safe and stay out of it until we can find out more.”
I narrowed my eyes trying to read between the lines.
“Internal Affairs has been here since yesterday,” he said in a hushed tone. “Don’t get involved in anything corrupt.”
“She’s not corrupt,” I said, stunned.
“Then, she’s got nothing to worry about.”
* * *
Dean was no help either. He had court all day and never came into the office. At ten o’clock the rest of the team and I were called to investigate a double homicide with an attempted shooting of a police officer. Besides questioning witnesses and looking at evidence, I questioned other police officers on what they knew of Brooke Fury.
Every male cop thought she was great. Beautiful, fun, and aseriouslygood police officer. They all said she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty or get into a fight. Some even went so far as to say they’d rather partner with her than most of the other female officers, because she was tough and trustworthy.
The female officers didn’t have anything bad to say either. They told me she was awesome when it came to kids on the street, and how just last week, she talked a jumper into going with her for a cup of coffee to talk about his problems. Not one person had anything bad to say about her, except for Lydia Martinez, who told me she’d heard Brooke slept with the entire vice squad and all of the K-9 unit.
